Udall, who has lived in Colorado for several decades, was born and raised in Tucson, the district his late father, Mo, represented for nearly 30 years in Congress. Democrat Mark Udall served in the Colorado Legislature, Congress and as a U.S. senator before losing in November to Republican Cory Gardner of Yuma.

Udall served on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and led the bipartisan effort to rein in the NSA’s dragnet collection of Americans’ personal data. He was one of the leading advocates for releasing the Senate Intelligence Committee’s study of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program.

WASHINGTON — Interrogation techniques used by CIA agents or allies in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks were not only harsh — comparable to torture — but also ineffective, according to a damning report made public Tuesday by the U.S. Senate.

Its release marked the end of a tangled investigation by Senate officials, who combed through more than 6.3 million pages of documents over five years to better understand how CIA operatives treated terrorism suspects or detainees in response to the 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

“This document examines the CIA’s secret overseas detention of at least 119 individuals and the use of coercive interrogation techniques — in some cases amounting to torture,” said U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein in a statement.

The California Democrat heads the Senate intelligence committee and she took to the Senate floor on Tuesday to unveil an executive summary of the committee’s findings, which comes from a larger report said to run more than 6,000 pages.

Many details already have been made public — including the near-drowning method of interrogation known as “water-boarding” — but its release Tuesday exposed new details about the program started under President George W. Bush.

WASHINGTON — At this stage, there’s little doubt about the long reach of U.S. surveillance agencies — from the well-documented dragnets by the National Security Agency to newer revelations about databases that are available to a wide range of U.S. authorities.

Asked what else was out there, Udall was largely circumspect, as the Colorado Democrat is limited by rules regarding classified materials. Still, he mentioned “geo-location technology” as well as business records such as “financial statements” and “travel invoices” as areas in which he wanted to know more.

“There are programs that we continue to ask questions about,” Udall said.

For those of us who hoped a Democratically controlled Washington would lead to a thorough review of the tortuous interrogation techniques employed by the Bush administration, the last few days have sure been a drag.

Strike that: A fiasco!

First, President Barack Obama completely blew it by reversing his promise to make available possibly hundreds of photos that would have provided clear and definite evidence of just what took place.

Then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a press conference in which she managed to look as guilty as Richard Nixon while further managing to insult the Central Intelligence Agency in what surely was a bold-faced lie. (Though her expression was more blanched than bold.)

“They mislead us all the time,” Pelosi said.

Suddenly, the debate we needed to have in this country about what actually took place in those interrogation rooms – and what was justified by the Bush administration – has become lost in the Obama-Pelosi shuffle.

Instead, we’re left to wonder whether an ethics investigation should be launched against one of the most powerful Democrats in the nation.

Thanks, Nancy, for sticking up for our country’s principles back in 2003 when you for-sure knew about waterboarding!

Kind of makes it irrelevant what she says about 2002!

And she better hope and pray the CIA doesn’t leak the document that proves she knew in 2002! Because as columnist Charles Krauthammer put it, if Pelosi had been on a lie detector machine during that presser, “it would have short-circuited.”

Lynn Bartels thinks politics is like sports but without the big salaries and protective cups. The Washington Post's "The Fix" blog has named her one of Colorado's best political reporters and tweeters.

Joey Bunch has been a reporter for 28 years, including the last 12 at The Denver Post. For various newspapers he has covered the environment, water issues, politics, civil rights, sports and the casino industry.